Sunday, May 20, 2012

US beer vs UK beer

I like to believe that I deal with all the
weighty cultural issues in this British expat blog and what could be of more
import than the relative merits of British and American beer?

The first thing that I would say is that
the almost universally negative image of American beer that exists in Britain (and
Europe too
for that matter) is certainly too simplistic.(The negative image is summed up by the old Monty Python joke: “American beer is a little like making love in a canoe.It's f**king close to water.”)

The problem for American
beer is that the only brands that you tend to see in the UK are the awful ones like Miller Lite and Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch).These really are bland, watery beers.Like in the UK, however, the better American beers tend to come from the smaller,
local breweries, rather than the leviathans.(To some extent, the US has similar problems with beer as the UK did in the 60s and 70s with aggressive major
breweries [with crap beer] trying to muscle out the smaller and medium-sized
breweries [with good beer] with the intention of creating local monopolies.)

Because of the localized nature
of brewing and the size of the US, plus my own admittedly limited experience, it would actually be ridiculous for me to even
attempt to give a comprehensive major overview, so instead I will just settle
for giving my personal experiences of living in north-central Florida.

My favorite (big brewery) US beers that I drink regularly here in North Central
Florida:

Shiner – brewed in Austin, Texas is easily my favourite that I've found.It has a strong and distinctive taste.When I used to visit Florida, I couldn’t believe how dirt cheap it was in the
store.By the time I’d moved here,
however, they’d bumped up the price!They only sell Shiner in certain US states and luckily Florida is one of them - I was disappointed to find that I
couldn’t get hold of it up in New York.

Blue Moon – A Belgian-style
wheat beer which is very palatable (despite being a Coors product!)
Belgian-style wheat beers (think Hoegaarden) seem to be fairly common
here nowadays (I believe that US breweries started making witbeers about 10 or
15 years ago), but German-style, tarter wheat beers are generally rarer, it seems.

Sam Adams produce reasonable
beer and I enjoy some of their selection packs - some of these beers can be a
little gimmicky but it’s fun to try them.

Yuengling is for me just on
the right side of the line between the watery American beers and the good ones
in my opinion.I will drink it sometimes,
however, because it’s often cheaper(!)

Most British/Irish beers are
relatively specialist in the US in my (limited) experience.The most commonly available ones in the bars
and stores where I am are Newcastle Brown Ale and Harp, which seems a little
bizarre to me, as these drinks were common in the UK back in the 70s and 80s but have largely waned in
popularity.

The best British beer, the
real ales, aren’t really available in draught form, which is a pity, but no
surprise.You can get a limited but reasonable
range in the bottled section – although the US tends to put everything into small (approx 300ml?)
bottles, which still irritates me a little.I still find it strange seeing a US miniature, differently shaped
version of the iconic Newcastle Brown Ale bottle and there is something
sacrilegious about seeing hefeweissen sold in bottles below 500ml in size (although
you can buy the ‘proper’ German 500ml bottles in the specialist stores!);-)

European beers are also
fairly widely available in the US in my experience and I drink a lot of Becks Dark,
Warsteiner, and Heineken here.I have
also found a couple of outlets locally that sell my all time favourite (more
specialist) European beers, which tend to be from Germany*, Belgium, and
Central Europe.German hefeweissen will
always be one of my favourite tipples.

Cider

Cider isn’t a beer, of course, but it’s
drunk in a similar way, so I thought that I would give it a mention.I actually love cider as a refreshing
alternative to beer and having cheap, available cider is something that I miss
here in the US, especially when you’re on a limited budget (cider is often the
cheap drunk’s tipple in the UK!).

From what I gather, cider wasn’t particularly
common in the US (compared to the UK) until
relatively recently.Now it’s easier to
get hold of, but the ciders tend to be the big Irish brands that are advertised
to be drunk over ice, such as Magners. American ciders often seem to be sweeter and
relatively weak, compared to the stronger and drier British ones, in my
experience.

Scrumpy style cider is pretty specialist in
the US, although it’s difficult to imagine that it doesn’t exist in a
rough form somewhere in the USA?

The good news is that do sell Strongbow on
draught in some bars of the bars around here – hurray!

*German
bars are quite possibly the best place in the world for drinking draught and
bottled beer, in my opinion.Mainly because
they are scrupulous when it comes to storing their beers at the correct
temperature.This is why Germany is generally known to be the
best place for drinking draught Guiness methinks (even better than Ireland, ironically).The sad and slightly strange fact is that in places
like the US and Britain, bars will quite often undermine a great beer by
storing, or serving it too cold or too warm in my experience.

19 comments:

back in the colonial era, ciders were big, nothing beats a cool Shiner on a hot Texas day, loved to knock back a few of those when I lived near Austin, if you're looking for British or German Beers on draft try The Flying Sacucer Pub, I think there is one in Tampa, not sure, we have one in Raleigh they have about 180 beers on draft, Kevin

Here in the Mid-west we have a lot of local beers, although I'm not a drinker (of beer, I might add). My husband enjoys the seasonal Sam Adams (apart from the wheat) and has just discovered the Guinness black lageer too.Cider- if you live in the States, you can be horrified that they're giving it to kids, but here it's non-alcoholic and very sweet. In the UK it's often very strong.

One of my favorite topics! You'll probably be able to find Sierra Nevada Kellerweis somewhere near you - nice traditional wheat style. Their Glissade is a good bock seasonal. I dig the Shiner Bock and a lot of the Sam Adams samplers we had in January. Remember the one that tasted like grapefruit?

Yuengling is AOK and not too $$$. They've been around a long long time as far as US breweries go.

English ale can be downright inspirational. You can drink them at temperatures well above near freezing, unlike Bud or Corona. Beer distributors in New York carry a good amount of ales like Fullers, Black Sheep, Theakston, Wells Bombardier, Samuel Smith - and lots of German beer. One outstanding Bavarian Doppelbock I had last Christmas is Weihenstephaner Korbinian... delicious. Let me mention one more - Hennepin, a saison/farmhouse ale. It's one of those big bottle cork beers, but it's totally worth it.

RateBeer and BeerAdvocate are good places to read what people have to say about the wild selection of beer out there in the world. A lot of people get excited about hops. I usually tend to go for more subtle brews where the hops lend more aroma than bitterness - they're easier to drink.

Black Sheep and Theakston were breweries relatively local to where I lived in Yorkshire, before I moved to Florida. British ale can be great and remarkably tasty and complex in flavour, I can sometimes find it a little soporific though (after about the 6th pint! hehe!) Lager beers and cider are more refreshing, but some lager can be a little bland, many of the Mexican beers often don't have much of a taste for me.

The Bavarian Dopplebocks are just the Mecca of beer for me, I also like those extra strong Winter brews that they make - although you couldn't really drink something that strong as your staple tipple (I'd give it try, though!) The great thing with German beer is that it is actually very cheap if you buy it over there! (Maybe I should lobby my brother to move back to Germany?)

You're welcome... yeah, lagers are way easier for extended bouts than some of the heavier ales. The other thing you pointed out is serving beer at the wrong temp. They do that sometimes with the ales in bars around here, serving them really cold.

Yes, in the US they often serve ales too cold, especially down here in Florida where freezing the heck out of everything is seen as desirable by some. In the UK, they can serve lagers too warm, or they did so in the past, nowadays they can do the opposite. They should keep lager and ale in separate fridges, but they don't.

The cask beers really don't like any major temperature fluctuations. You really can tell the difference when a beer has been looked after.

It's frustrating. But then you just have to find the bars who know what they're doing. If everyone treated beer like the Germans, the world would be a better place. But then, the Germans drink more beer than anyone else, apart from maybe the Belgians. ;-)

Gotta agree with you 100% on these, especially your choices for American beer :) Everything else is just so watery! Missed me some German beer this year, it was so delish there. Hope the start of your summer is going great and you find plenty of time to sit down and have some more good beers :)

Note that Shiner is brewed by the Spoetzel Brewery in Shiner, Texas (not Austin). If you like Blue Moon you should try a beer exchange in your area to get some Adelberts Naked Nun (brewed in Austin). HomeField Grill did a "Battle of the Wits" between Naked Nun and Blue Moon; Naked Nun won!

Happy homemaker, you should never drink a British beer out of a cold glass, it is one of the first rules. If you do, when the cold ale hits the even colder Glass it makes condensation for inside the glass which dilutes the beer that you are drinking

Very glad I found this post! I'm doing the opposite of you-American with an English husband now living in the UK (Brighton) and I'm getting a bit frustrated with trying to find some of the seasonal brews from the States that I miss around this time of year-I'd even take a Sam Adams or Blue Moon seasonal at this point! Nice to see a Brit recognize the fact that most US beers in the UK are the big guys though, hence the lack of quality taste. Feels like I'm always defending American brews!

Yes, some of the US seasonal brews are interesting, I like to get a Sam Adams variety box from time to time and generally like them all, with the possible exception of the pumpkin! ;-)

In British Real Ale pubs, you will get Winter brews in the colder months, but they often tend to be very strong and dark, which isn't a style I'm particularly keen on (though I love the German Winter Doppleboks!).

I do think some beers work better in certain climates too. I've always found a lot of Mexican beer a bit watery and tasteless, but I see it in a slightly better light here in FL, as it does have some refreshing qualities when it's hot. Traditonal British beer (bitter) is great for a Autumn night, but can be a bit heavy and soporific when the weather's hot and humid.

All the beers I liked back home were not imported but licensed and don't taste the same. Sometimes the recipes are changed (kind of like Cadburys chocolate (one of my other pet peeves) because a particular ingredient is either disallowed or can not be called beer or chocolate if included.